


at the center of me

by achillese



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achillese/pseuds/achillese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's speech about family wasn't entirely directed at Kevin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the center of me

**Author's Note:**

> Coda/fix-it to S9E02 "Devil May Care," because I needed one with a taste of Adam in it.

_"Because you’re family."_

Dean leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on his face, eyes shut tight as though closing them would help close out the memories, the guilt, the _ache_. He didn’t open them until he was sure he could look at himself in the bathroom mirror, stare himself right in the eyes and think to himself, ‘You did everything you could.’

He wasn’t thinking about Kevin. Even when he’d been talking to Kevin, giving him that ancient speech about family, his mind had wandered elsewhere, falling headfirst down that rabbit hole he swore he’d never revisit, because the guilt tasted too bitter and the regret was too palpable. He’d been talking to Kevin, and yet, he’d also been talking to someone else.

Dean should’ve said those things years earlier, to a different face. Not all of it - maybe not all of it applied - but most of it. 

_"We are all we’ve got.”_

But ‘we’ could’ve been more. ‘We’ could’ve included a snot-nosed sandy-haired bastard kid who, even if he hadn’t become a staple at the Bunker or a regular in the back of the Impala, would’ve still been included in an ‘us.’ 

_I won’t make the same mistake with Kevin._

And he hadn’t. He’d slapped the family label on him, promised him their lives, and given him a place in their ‘we.’ He did what he could, and said what he could, but it was too little too late for the nineteen year-old Dean always kept locked in a box in his head. 

Dean took a closer look at himself in the mirror, at the dark circles under his eyes and the sprinkle of freckles across his cheeks. He tried to find remnants of the person he used to be, but could only see so far.

_Do you like what you see?_

Dean could almost see him in the mirror, the tall lanky kid whose name Dean refused to even _think_ , because thinking it meant admitting he _hadn’t_ done everything he could. None of them had. 

_"Because you’re family."_ Dean’s words to Kevin, his reassurance.

Clear as a bell, from a different, distant memory, _his_ voice: _"You’ve got no right to say that to me."_

They hadn’t back then. They still didn’t now.

Dean swallowed hard, cleared his throat, croaked: “I know.” Dean paused, and for the first time in years, said _his_ name out loud, because after all this time and all this dancing around the crux of the pain, _he_ deserved his name: “Adam.”

The empty air around him swallowed the name whole and gave nothing back.


End file.
